As is known in the art, different wireless networks and/or systems of radios avoid interfering with each other by various options. For example, some systems rely on pre-arrangement or careful assignment of frequency bands, time slots, or signature pulses as is done for cellular systems through frequency reuse maps and TDMA for GSM, OFDMA for LTE, spread spectrum for IS-95, and combinations of these for WCDMA through HSPA commercial cellular standards. Other systems utilize collision avoidance techniques such as those employed for a-packet based systems such as 802.11/16/22 (WiFi and WiMax) where collisions are controlled as part of a multiple access medium access control procedure (e.g. carrier sense multiple access). Still other systems utilize on the fly interference assessment and avoidance is used in the new, currently operational paradigm for “cognitive radio” via dynamic spectrum access (DSA) for the newly allowed “secondary” user (see IEEE SCC41: Standards for Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks). This is done by the system of “secondary user” radios actively sensing the radio spectrum and coordinating to choose an empty band for transmission.
The existing systems, however, all fail if they are unable to avoid interference.
As the consumer market continues to rise for smart phones and wireless data service, the demand for more and more throughput increases drastically and the radio spectrum continues to become more crowded. A new paradigm in wireless communication is emerging where radios can be built to withstand interference to the level where interference is no longer avoided. Interference is allowed, even invited, to allow for more wireless devices to make use of the scarce free space in the wireless spectrum. For example, the LTE Advanced standard (to support the HetNet feature) allows, even encourages, interference. If this new feature is enabled, reliable performance would require mobiles to have some kind of interference mitigation in the receivers.
Conventional cognitive networks adapt at a network/routing layer, not the physical layer. Such networks typically learn which network nodes are having trouble sending packets through them and then they start to change how they route the packets. This conventional type of cognitive network does not invite or encourage interference; it simply does the best it can to avoid using links that are hindered by interference. The subject of this invention, in contrast, purposely seeks out opportunities to create interference, but to do so in an intelligent way that takes advantage of the situation and device protocols and capabilities at hand along with making use of advanced processing and sensing technology so as to enable high throughputs for its own link as well as the link with which it simultaneously shares the band.